The Bruce and Virginia MacLaury Chair

Henry J. Aaron is currently the Bruce and Virginia MacLaury Senior Fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution. From 1990 through 1996 he was the director of the Economic Studies program.

He initially joined the Brookings staff in 1968. From 1967 until 1989 he also taught at the University of Maryland. In 1977 and 1978 he served as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. He chaired the 1979 Advisory Council on Social Security. During the academic year 1996-97, he was a Guggenheim Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

He is a graduate of U.C.L.A and holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.

He is a member of the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the advisory committee of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and the visiting committee of the Harvard Medical School. He is a member of the board of directors of Abt Associates and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He was a founding member, vice president, and chair of the board of the National Academy of Social Insurance. He has been vice president and member of the executive committee of the American Economic Association and was president of the Association of Public Policy and Management. He has been a member of the boards of directors of the College Retirement Equity Fund and Georgetown University.

His publications include: Reforming Medicare: Options, Tradeoffs, and Opportunities (co-authored with Jeanne M. Lambrew); Taxing Capital Income: Do We? Should We? Can We? (coedited with Leonard Burman and Eugene Steuerle); Can We Say No: The Challenge of Health Care Rationing (with Melissa Cox); Coping With Methuselah: The Impact of Molecular Biology on Medicine and Society, (co-edited with William Schwartz); Agenda for the Nation (coedited with James Lindsay and Pietro Nivola); Crisis in Tax Administration (co-edited with Joel Slemrod); The Plight of Academic Medical Centers; Countdown to Reform: The Great Social Security Debate (with Robert Reischauer); and Setting National Priorities: The Year 2000 and Beyond, which he co-edited. Other books include The Painful Prescription: Rationing Hospital Care (co-authored with William Schwartz); Can America Afford to Grow Old?, (co-authored with Barry Bosworth); Serious and Unstable Condition: Financing America's Health Care; Economic Effects of Fundamental Tax Reform (co-edited, with William Gale); and Behavioral Aspects of Retirement Economics (editor).

Henry J. Aaron is currently the Bruce and Virginia MacLaury Senior Fellow in the Economic Studies program at the Brookings Institution. From 1990 through 1996 he was the director of the Economic Studies program.

He initially joined the Brookings staff in 1968. From 1967 until 1989 he also taught at the University of Maryland. In 1977 and 1978 he served as Assistant Secretary for Planning and Evaluation at the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. He chaired the 1979 Advisory Council on Social Security. During the academic year 1996-97, he was a Guggenheim Fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies in the Behavioral Sciences at Stanford University.

He is a graduate of U.C.L.A and holds a Ph.D. in economics from Harvard University.

He is a member of the Institute of Medicine, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the advisory committee of the Stanford Institute for Economic Policy Research, and the visiting committee of the Harvard Medical School. He is a member of the board of directors of Abt Associates and the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities. He was a founding member, vice president, and chair of the board of the National Academy of Social Insurance. He has been vice president and member of the executive committee of the American Economic Association and was president of the Association of Public Policy and Management. He has been a member of the boards of directors of the College Retirement Equity Fund and Georgetown University.

His publications include: Reforming Medicare: Options, Tradeoffs, and Opportunities (co-authored with Jeanne M. Lambrew); Taxing Capital Income: Do We? Should We? Can We? (coedited with Leonard Burman and Eugene Steuerle); Can We Say No: The Challenge of Health Care Rationing (with Melissa Cox); Coping With Methuselah: The Impact of Molecular Biology on Medicine and Society, (co-edited with William Schwartz); Agenda for the Nation (coedited with James Lindsay and Pietro Nivola); Crisis in Tax Administration (co-edited with Joel Slemrod); The Plight of Academic Medical Centers; Countdown to Reform: The Great Social Security Debate (with Robert Reischauer); and Setting National Priorities: The Year 2000 and Beyond, which he co-edited. Other books include The Painful Prescription: Rationing Hospital Care (co-authored with William Schwartz); Can America Afford to Grow Old?, (co-authored with Barry Bosworth); Serious and Unstable Condition: Financing America’s Health Care; Economic Effects of Fundamental Tax Reform (co-edited, with William Gale); and Behavioral Aspects of Retirement Economics (editor).

The cost of health care is going to keep going up. It’s going to go up because we’re getting older and as we get older we use more health care and it’s going to go up because science is keeping on producing wonderful new things that physicians and hospitals can do. And they cost money. What we can do is eliminate the needlessly expensive way in which we now provide health care.

[Mitt Romney] belongs to a very conservative party that hates this [health care] bill, many members of which have sworn that they’d rather eat ground glass than let this law go forward. But there is the conflicting problem of, ‘If you break it, you own it.’ [He will own] anything that goes wrong with the health-care system down the road.

The Ryan–Wyden [budget] plan is not a plan. It is a press release, so vague in its description that it could mean many and quite different things. Given what Ryan has said in his latest budget proposal, I would be amazed if he and Wyden could come to agreement on legislative language.